Tag Archives: Lysander

So I felt it was time to work on my non metallic metal (N.M.M.) technique, not just painting N.M.M. silver, but gold too. I looked at a few models that have displayed the technique and decided it was something I can definitely pull off. In research for a step-by-step technique, I would like to source http://warhammer-empire.com/theforum/?topic=10116.0 A great resource for painting NMM. It is a style that I have had many friends ask me to do in the past and I gave it an attempt with my Imperial Fist Lysander and also my Eldar wraithlord and they turned out well to a certain extent; both of these models have picked up painting awards in the past.

Captain Darnath Lysander rises up over a rock, at the ready for battle.

Capt. Lysander

Wraithlord which picked up a silver demon trophy.

Wraithlord; note the attempt at NMM. Although I had given NMM a shot on Lysander, this was my first big model with the technique done over the whole model.

This model has had extensive conversions and sculpting involved.

I felt that I needed to get back to basics with the technique, since doing yellow NMM takes a lot more than I suspected and I realise now that there’s a fine line between painting NMM gold and simply bright yellow.

I found that I had a dwarven Demon Slayer model that is really quite old now. It is one of my favourite models and I have to say that I have always had a soft spot for dwarves. The contrast that you can achieve with the flesh tones and wacky colour hair is really attractive to me and then there is the ability to do some freehand facial tattoos on some of the more rare units, I wanted to keep this model’s flesh clear of tattoos. They are a slow army in the game, so there was my hesitation; they could do with a little speed.

When I was painting the model, I painted about 95% of the model, not including the areas that required NMM, then moved into the NMM. Tackling one area of NMM silver first, I just practiced where I felt that the light was going to hit it, with sharp contrasts with areas that had little or no light. It didn’t look especially effective. This was a small mistake, but could be easily corrected. I quickly realised that in order for the technique to look correct, I needed to paint all the areas that required the NMM, as the key its to “trick” the eye into seeing the paint look reflective, when it in fact, is just the contrasts between all the different tones. It is not unlike regular painting, where some kind of visual trickery is used.

Dwarf Demon Slayer. This was a first attempt of doing NMM with a painting guide, from someone who knows quite a bit about painting in that style

Demon Slayer from the back. I soon realised that this technique was all about using the “light” to create shadow where there may not be.

Bringing all the NMM together was the final work on the gold NMM. I found this to be a little harder to pull off, since I was using more than three paints (silver NMM actually uses Codex Grey, Skull White and Chaos Black). Gold NMM uses a combination of yellows, browns and finally, a very small amount of Chaos Black, which was my added twist to the great NMM painting guide. Another difference between NMM gold and silver,that I learned from the NMM guide mentioned above, is the lack of use of pure white highlight when painting gold. Many other sites did use a final touch of white to reflect the light, but this really detracted from the overall effect of gold NMM (thanks Quadrille).